


The Patient Man

by FunkyinFishnet



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen, Relationship(s), Spiritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10510827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyinFishnet/pseuds/FunkyinFishnet
Summary: Wayward children always returned eventually. And Bray was a patient man.





	

 

 

 

Abigail had warned him about snakes. There’d been plenty around home, harmless things mostly, all deadly appearance but no true poison. Abigail had often picked them up and gotten Bray to hold them too. Their scales had been warm from basking in the sun and their stares had always been cold.

 

He remembered Abigail’s warning – that some would bite, hurt and worse. There was medicine but not always what was needed. Bray had learned what to look for. He saw the beauty of them, how quickly they could strike and subdue, how they survived. He liked to sit outside, his feet bare except for the tickle of insects and the glide of snakeskin.

 

Now he could count a snake among his children. For even as Randy strayed, he remained one of them. He wasn’t like Daniel, a false son from the start. Bray had looked into Randy’s eyes and had seen a boy searching, for gold always, and for a belonging. The only lies Bray saw were those Randy told himself.

 

Here was a boy whose family was rich with success, imparting to him a great air of expectancy, surety of what the world owed him and how he should behave to receive it. What other possibility was there? For he had been dishonorable and still the world had bent to provide a golden offering for the expectant boy king. He had been granted his success, as his family had taught him, until it had been taken from him in the same manner.

 

He still hadn’t learned that lesson.

 

Always searching for family, wasn’t he? For home. For the family he’d been born to had given him so much but they hadn’t given him peace, they hadn’t given him the substance of something needed that he searched for still. He’d had so many bands of brothers. He had been the leader and the led and had striven alone. He’d never received what he needed though, until he’d allowed himself to be reshaped, to submit to Bray.

 

It was a sight so many had not believed possible – Randy Orton, the Viper, kneeling gladly before Bray Wyatt. Randy thought he hid so much from the world. Bray could see his longing, his need for things not known or spoken, because for all his anger and dishonor Randy lived by so many rules. Bray could set him free.

 

Luke hadn’t trusted Randy. But Luke was a firstborn, with expectations of his own. He did not trust a usurper or how easily Randy had come to fall in line. Luke believed that Bray could achieve great things but he did not believe in Randy.

 

Luke had first come to Bray with dirt on his hands and in his blood. He’d worked the land for longer than he knew. He’d needed the family; he’d belonged to them. He still did. Wayward children always returned eventually. And Bray was a patient man.

 

He could remember Luke’s first meal with them, how he’d picked carefully through the beans and waited for someone else to ask for a second bowl. His eyes had tried to see everything and they’d kept coming back to Bray.

 

Luke was angry now. His anger had led him to hurting Bray, to choosing his own path over the one Bray had set before him. Children would always fight over who was first and who was most loved. In this family though, there were no favorites. All would be punished and lifted up the same.

 

Erik was still healing. He would return when his body was whole again. He didn’t blame Bray. He missed Luke; they’d been separated before and it had hurt them both in the end. It’d brought them back together stronger though. It’d be that way again, for them and for Randy.

 

Randy thought he was unmasking, shocking, by burning down the compound and claiming to burn Abigail with it. But it’d been obvious for years that Randy couldn’t resist a poisonous bite. He’d been taught to hurt and betray to gain expected reward; a boy searching for the greatness he’d been promised without suffering any pain himself. How did he expect to truly win without pain? Pain meant progress. Pain was to be sought as much as victory.

 

Abigail had loved the compound. Bray could see memories there with open eyes – the fishing and farming and family time, teaching and blessings that were always returned. He could hear her voice in the trees’ songs and the river’s laughter. But that wasn’t because she was buried there. Randy had misunderstood. Abigail’s resting place was a secret known only to Bray, one of many and the only one not imparted from her lips. Abigail was safe from Randy’s transparent boyish greed.

 

He would be punished, like any wayward son. It was what he needed. And he would come home. He knew what Bray had been promised – the highest championship so that his voice would be heard all over this world, the world itself for reshaping and reordering, consuming. Randy knew and he had been fulfilled by Bray’s message. He had found peace at Bray’s feet. He could claim it was all an act, a plan to gain his empty gold again. But Bray had felt the press of his tongue, had seen his gaze clarify at Bray’s words, his being relax and shed the anticipated tension of constant threat. Randy had come home.

 

No one had perished in Randy’s fire. Hadn’t he wondered where his brothers and sisters had been? Why no one had tried to stop him? They had been journeying. They had known. They would retrieve what stones they could from the old ground, memories to build on and invoke. They would create new ones.

 

Randy would bite and snarl and claim his advantage that wasn’t one at all. He would be left empty; no true home to go to, no one to entirely understand. Where would he find peace, now that he truly knew what he was missing? Luke had not yet contacted Bray but he would return. Bray had heard his prayers. And Erik would be able to walk strong again soon. They would gladly help him punish Randy; to bring him home for the clarity of baptism and fire, the way it should be.

 

Bray would sit outside his new home, taking shape already, though many preferred sleeping under the stars anyhow. Abigail had taught Bray about constellations and the stories they told, how there was a star out there for him, waiting to be named. Bray would find it and he’d sit with insects and snakes brushing past his skin, his championship in his lap, his sons at his side and his feet. Bray was a man of expectancy too. But he knew the way forward as well as the promise. He knew when they would run.

 

_-the end_

 


End file.
